Tokenized Assets In Switzerland – New Structures And Standards

On 1 December 2021, the state bank of the Swiss Canton of Berne (Kantonalbank) opened a digital market place for tokenized assets. The market place called "SME|X" is targeted at small and medium sized enterprises and is based on the blockchain technology. The offering in-cludes the whole process from the issuing of shares, to storage, trading and settlement of tokenized assets. For small and medium sized enterprises, this offering opens up a new way to attract investments. For investors, a new liquid investment category in small and medium sized enterprises in Switzerland becomes more easily accessible.

The move of the Berne Cantonal Bank follows earlier projects such as the market place for digital assets operated by Taurus under the name of TDX since spring 2021 together with a group of banks or the Swiss Digital Exchange SDX operated by the leading Swiss exchange group SIX. SDX received its license from the Swiss Supervisory Authority FINMA to operate a stock